Volume II, Number 2, 2006

ABSTRACT – For geographical regionalisation, the mental criterion we proposed in 2002 proves to be really helpful in establishing the limits of functional territorial systems. Secondly, it stores their structure and evolutionary features, especially the social (cultural) and behavioural ones. The Carpathians appear as the Romanian primordial archetypal mental space and this is also an unquestionable proof of the formation, evolution, and continuity of the Romanian people in the Carpathians and in the territories neighbouring this mountain chain.

ABSTRACT – The long area from the Baltic to the Adriatic and the Black Sea between the German and the Russian (and the 19th century Turkish) empires is called Eastern-Central Europe in the Hungarian academic discourse. The peoples living here were forced to conform to these big empires for long centuries. They needed strong adaptability in the 20th century, after the disintegration of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, too. The independent states that emerged as succession states had to conform sometimes to the empires in the west and sometimes to those in the east both in an economic and a political, and a social sense. Economic development was influenced considerably by the political ambition of building an independent country, which meant radical elimination of century-long relations. Every country made a new, centrally controlled internal regional division. This was what happened in all the different political systems. In these decades, borders, both state borders between countries, and administrative boundaries within a country played an important part. Central political intention could only manifest itself through a hierarchical system, which postulated the exact detachment and the strong protection of the individual administrative areas. Consequently, the belts along the borders of the countries increasingly became depressed areas. The number of the inhabitants decreased and the population was ageing because the economy in these areas was not developed. In the new bourgeois period it was the economic political ambition of each country to be able to join world economy. On our continent the easiest way to achieve this aim was to join the European Union. However, as members of the European Union, these countries have to give up their former policy of isolation and they have to form organic (economic) regions. We can witness the weakening process of borders. This holds true for both state borders and administrative boundaries and the new method of enforcing central political will. The democratic bourgeois establishment tries to reduce the power of hierarchical systems. The increasing economic relations between the countries, the increasing role of cross-border relations, and the disputes regarding internal regional divisions are all markers of this process.

ABSTRACT – The Allier department has an incredible range of landscapes among which the bocage is the most representative. The bocage is an enclosed field with scattered households. Some areas are also totally free of hedge. We did not want to compare the openfield and the bocage but we tried to prove that there was a different type of bocage. So we studied two opposed sectors situated in the East and in the West of this department. The use of aerial shootings and their processing in a G.I.S. (Geographical Information System) allowed us to map the differences between the two areas in the last 50 years. This objective description obtained from actual and past data helped us analyse the change factors in the whole bocage of the Allier department.

ABSTRACT – The geomorphologic processes are usually limited as area of occurrence. They can be localized punctually, but the transformations they induce are irreversible and can produce very important environmental changes such as landscape transformations, loss of human lives, destructions of elements of the cultural heritage or taking agricultural lands out of use. In this paper, we tried to establish a regionalization of the geomorphologic processes at risk by applying a weightening method that considers both the favourable and triggering factors for this type of processes.

ABSTRACT – The Land of Maramureş is one of the most representative natural regions. It has become a cross-border region on a segment of the Romanian-Ukrainian border because of the evolution of human society. The placement of the present border on the material and spiritual convergent axis represented by the Tisa Valley (in 1920) determined a reorientation of the transport systems of the two Maramureş components. The transition from the planned socialist economy to the market-oriented one in 1990/1991 produced rapid changes both in the structure of the transport systems and in the orientation of the transportation flow. The new conditions allowed the appearance of the first tendencies to restore the Maramureş transport system. Still, the different ways chosen by the two countries (Romania and Ukraine) in their relation with the European power centres created new barriers for these new tendencies.

ABSTRACT – The paper presents the actual state and condition of territorial inequalities at the Romanian-Hungarian border region, which shows – at present – an evident advantage of the Hungarian side, from the point of view of complex socio-economical aspects. This advantage is especially outstanding for the Hungarian side in the field of infrastructural supply (drinking water, natural gas, and public sewage networks), but it is valid for some characteristics of human capital, too, (above all, with regard to the illiteracy rate and the proportion of highly skilled persons with bachelor degree). Despite these difficulties, these inequalities are not insurmountable and should not affect efficient cross-border cooperation between the two countries. This regional inventory facilitates the evaluation of the starting-point of this kind of cooperation and also depicts some aspects of the interregional cooperation of the four counties north of the Romanian-Hungarian border region which belong to the Carpathian Euroregion.

ABSTRACT – Agricultural land is the main land use category in the Republic of Moldova. Agricultural land was 74,5% of the surface of the republic on January 1st 2005.  The dominance of agricultural landscape has been a reality on this territory since the beginning of the nineteenth century. During the latest 15 years, agricultural land has been dwindling (by 44.4 ha per year). During the latest 5 years this rhythm has become more stable (about 2.543-2.520 ha). From the spatial point of view, the structure of land is relatively homogenous. Agricultural land represents the main land use category in most of the villages. At the beginning of 2005, agricultural land varied between 47.9 % (Străşeni Department) and 87.4% (Drochia Department). Territorial differentiations in land use are caused by the variety of natural conditions (particularly, the morphological conditions and, partially, the soil and climatic conditions) as well as the population factor.

ABSTRACT – In a relatively uniform natural environment, the settlements in the Baia Mare Depression have very diverse forms. According to an oriented complex typology, we have identified the features and the problems characteristic of these settlements, according to the following criteria: the infrastructure already, demographic features, education, health, and tourism. By synthesising these criteria, we identified the following settlement types: polarising urban centres, under-pressure urban settlements, important rural settlements, under-pressure rural settlements, and declining rural settlements. Each of these types shows that it is necessary to differentiate our intervention, i.e. territorial planning activities must respond accordingly to local and regional needs.

ABSTRACT – After the collapse of its economic system, Romania entered a new economic, social, and political period named transition. The transition from a planned economy to a market oriented one, the opening of the borders, the consolidation of the political and juridical systems led to the appearance of foreign direct investment as well as to its permanent increase. Against the frame of internal changes, the Romanian foreign policy evolved in a new direction marked by the country joining NATO and its accession to the European Union. After 1989, economic, political, and demographical changes influenced all Romanian settlements. Still, these changes had selective effects pushing some counties to progress and other to decline. Foreign investment concentrated especially in the areas where the infrastructure already built, the development level, and accessibility were more significant as well as the area where the local factors were more interested in making changes. This contributed to regional disparities as investment focused especially in Bucharest and in the North-West and West Development Regions. In our study we present the evolution of foreign direct investment in Romania in the last years and the disparities between regions and counties.

ABSTRACT – We used two indicators in order to quantify population’s concentration level in a certain area: Lorentz curve and Gini ratio. For our research we took into account two years – 1985 and 2002, in order to compare the period previous to 1990 and the one after it. We noticed that a demographical deconcentration process caused by population decrease and disappearance of certain settlements was characteristic of the Danube Valley, in the Giurgiu and Brăila sector. We could identify eight evolution models specific to the rural settlements of this area, with four increase and four decrease models.

ABSTRACT – Our paper focuses on built infrastructure disparities in Romania, especially on: the drinking water supply, the sewage system, the gas supply, the thermic energy, the telephone, and the public roads networks. We used statistical data from the 2003 Statistic Annual of Romania and we made our research using quantitative methods as well as calculating certain disparity indices (e.g. Hirschmann–Herfindahl Index, the Dual Index) in order to show the interregional disparity increase/decrease.

ABSTRACT – Taking into account tourism types and forms, the features of the natural, social, and of the economic environment, the attractive resources, and the touristic infrastructure, Dobrudja is a region consisting of four areas: the Danube river meadow, the Danube Delta and the Razim-Sinoie lake complex, the South-Dobrudjan seacoast, and the Dobrudjan Tableland. The main features of this touristic region are: diverse and attractive resources favourable for the development of two touristic activity categories characteristic of this region (e.g. ecotourism and agritourism); curative resources favourable for spas and recreational tourism; entertaining opportunities; the highest density of tourist areas in Romania.

ABSTRACT – Starting from identifying the appearance, the maintenance, and the increase of industrial imbalance in the Land of Bârsa, in this study we focused on both the industrialisation process, with its four evolutionary stages (localisation, selective concentration, regional polarisation, and mobility) and on the existing industrial disparities. Year 1990 was the starting point for increasing these disparities with a significant impact on economy, population, the settlement system, and the environment. Some of the factories were shut down, others underwent bankruptcy, and industry changed its evolutionary trend to a rapid decline. The “deindustrialisation” syntagm covers the new path followed by industry during the transition period, from a centralised economy to a market-oriented one that was supported by industrial reorganisation and privatisation. Either for the former or for the latter, the main purpose was the same: diminishing and eliminating the present industrial imbalances.

ABSTRACT – The technical town endowment (drinking and industrial water supplies, sewerage, district heating, natural gas and electric power supplies, telecommunication, access to means of transportation) represents a basic condition in assuring the quality standard concerning the population’s life and the economic development. Furthermore, it represents a premise in order that the connections between the centre-town and the suburbs, take place in optimal conditions. Considering all of the above, when talking about towns in the district of Cluj, the presence of important differences can be noticed between the towns proper and their suburbs, but also between themselves. Finding where these issues occur is a matter of great importance in order to improve them by investments, which would be an essential step in assuring support in order for towns to function at optimal rate.

ABSTRACT – This Sub-Carpathian sector polarised all economic life in Dâmboviţa County, as its territory was also in the past a crossroads of the most important commercial routes along the Ialomiţa, connecting Transylvania with the south of nowadays Romania and, therefore, the number of people was greater than for other Romanian regions. Between 1930 and 2002 the population of the Sub-Carpathians between the Prahova and the Dâmboviţa increased continuously according to certain economic, social, and cultural trends. We noticed that population natural growth rate decreased from 1992 to 2002 down to negative values because of both population aging and problematic medical assistance. At the same time, the migratory growth rate had an endo-dynamic feature in the areas where the natural growth rate was small and an exo-dynamic feature where the labour force was exceeding request and the unemployment rate was high.